Constant appeasement has been the cause of so much more conflict as a whole. No sane country wants conflict but when it arises, it needs to be crushed at its source. It cannot stand and each nation should be afraid to commit such atrocities in fear of the response. Tying conditions to aid given to the Ukrainian war effort is ludicrous. France should be very proud of their commitment to fight for what is very clearly right and other nations should follow in their footsteps. I am not advocating that Ukraine starts blasting missiles at civilians centres in Russia but they should be free to strike infrastructure that has clear ties to the invasion. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
That’s literally why Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine - appeasement of the USA failed.
You see, when the USSR demonstrated that the West could not hope to destroy it via military conquest (by beating 80% of all Nazis forces and taking Berlin), the USA formed NATO and staffed it with former Nazi officers and then oversaw Operation Gladio where NATO cultivated, armed, and trained “leave-behind militias” of Nazi-sympathizers to be used against the USSR. NATO established itself as a transnational nuclear military staffed by the most dangerous people in the world and accountable to no nation’s people and no democratic oversight.
Then, when the USSR was dissolved by internal reactionary forces seeking to reestablish liberal class society, NATO began to expand Eastward, just like Napoleon’s army and just like Hitler’s army, except this time they expanded using the new logic of political hegemony instead of military hegemony. They guided the rise of Nazi sympathizers all over Eastern Europe, voting against UN resolutions to condemn the glorification of Nazis, and worked to expand this unaccountable transnational nuclear military to the detriment of shared security globally. They even launched the first ever war for humanitarian causes and bombed Yugoslavia, including with depleted uranium bombs in civilian population centers.
Russia, for its part, invited the USA in to reorganize it’s economy and then suffered some of the worst outcomes seen in peace time, including a drop in life expectancy of 7 years over 7 years of time. But they were liberal capitalists now so they figured they could work with the USA and sought inclusion in NATO. They were rebuffed. They sought mutual security guarantees. They were rebuffed. They sought economic cooperation. They were rebuffed. America kept driving NATO Eastward at every opportunity. Russia eventually had to respond.
And they did. In 2014, after the USA participated in the Maidan coup that elevated the Right Sector faction after years of supporting Nazis in Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea. It did so in direct response to the USA demonstrating its intent to expand NATO to the Ukraine border with Russia - the same border used by Napoleon and Hitler to invade Russia and kill millions of Russians. The USA had years of push back from Russia, and appeasement, eventually escalating to the annexation, but the USA did not stop. Under Trump the USA overtly armed Ukraine for the first time providing weapons that everyone knew would be used against Russia. The USA escalated. And eventually, Russia needed to escalate further to stop the spread and stop the appeasement. So Russia invaded Ukraine to occupy its border, preventing Ukraine from joining NATO (due to rules about border conflicts), and militarizing the region to prevent further expansion and development of NATO positions.
It is the USA and Western Europe who are the global aggressors and it is the rest of the world who have been appeasing the USA.
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Why would you want to start nuclear conflict?
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russians have been claiming they’ve been fighting the whole NATO for 2 years so I don’t see this as an escalation.
What you see as an escalation really doesnt matter. Russian state has made it very clear that this would be escalation and would have a response
Opinion pieces on the Internet and political saber rattling by low level politicians does not a nuclear policy make.
States actually have quite a few different ways of signaling they are serious about potentially ending the world as we know it, and Russia is currently using none of them.
As an example, the Russian state’s own published nuclear policy has remained unchanged for over a decade and still explicitly prohibits nuclear first use in cases like this. Currently high level Russian politicians including Putin continue to reference said defense policy in response to questions about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. If they were seriously considering using said nuclear weapons in Ukraine, they would be unambiguously signaling through changing these documents and other such methods that other governments actually take seriously.
More to the point, breaking the nuclear taboo would be massively harmful to both Russia and Putins own interests. It would at best result in a NATO backed no fly zone over Ukraine while China and Iran completely abandon them, and quite possibly result in a direct conventional or nuclear war with Nato. I simply don’t buy that they would do that with no warning or previous signaling simply because an artillery rocket was manufactured in a different country.
Several NATO members have already okayed this for Ukraine and remain distinctly un-nuked. Plus, of course, the Ukrainians have been doing it with their domestically-produced gear for ages and also haven’t been nuked.
No.
